I forgot to ask you in my last letter: would you mind, if you have the time and energy, copying out and sending me the longish paragraph (I think it is only one) from L'Être et le Néant, in the chapter on 'Le Corps', where Sartre attacks the current psychological invention of "sensation"? The passage can be identified by the last(?) sentence in it: La sensation est dans la boite. Sensation -- "I perceive a sensation of blue" -- comes into being as a bogus entity when one conceives the eye as an organ of vision in an already visible world. If the world is already visible there is no need of an organ of vision in addition, and if one insists upon having one then one is bound to invent a "sensation of the world" as the end-result of "seeing" the already visible world with the organ of vision. For this reason it is a complete mistake to regard cakkhu as an organ of vision since rúpá are already visible. (Vis. Mag.'s pasáda rúpa is nonsense.) Could you also send the short passage on p. 601, where S. denies the existence of concepts that are not images?
[EL. 161] 6.vi.1959
Thank you for your letter. Your analysis of Dhammánusárí and Saddhánusárí is most useful and, I think, quite correct. I withdraw my statement about the commentaries' definition, which seems to be in order. I find I was confused about what exactly the commentarial definition is,[a] and also I was making the unjustified assumption that all eight ariyapuggalá are avinipátadhammá ("matters of not [being in danger of] hell" -- this sounds a little odd, but it should be taken in the same way as "a new broom is a matter of sweeping clean" -- i.e. "to be a new broom is to sweep clean", "to be a sotápanna is not to be in danger of hell"). Certainly the Dh. and S. are Ariyapuggalá, not puthujjana, though it now seems that the moment of transition from puthujjana to ariya is less clearly defined than I had thought it was -- the word matters is indefinite.
I also agree with you on the matter of Thera, and my enquiries were more or less intended to find out the local opinion and to avoid treading on anybody's toes. (I don't mind treading on people's toes if the matter seems to be of importance, but this one does not.) I imagine that such things are taken more seriously at Vajiráráma, where custom is often elevated almost to the status of Vinaya, at least sometimes. I shall leave it to my pen to decide whether or not, and when, to alter my present mode of addressing you on letters.
Mr. Perera has lent me a copy of the Vesak "Buddhist". An article by Gotama Wijesiri (have you seen it?) attempts to equate Husserl's "phenomenological reduction" with jhána. This, of course, is hopeless (are we to suppose that Sartre, who certainly practised the reduction to write his books, is a jhánalábhí?), but he gets a good mark for seeing that Husserl is relevant. Wijesiri, I see, approves your translating citta as "cognizance", which emphasizes the noetic aspect as against the noematic (was this your reason for choosing "cognizance"?), but since he also approves of The Heart of Buddhist Meditation it does not seem to be much of a recommendation. "Feelings are pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, just as in the modern physiological science..." is not a very happy statement. The rest of the "Buddhist" is mostly the usual nonsense (E. of Tangalle tells us that Cromwell beheaded King John of England), but I noted the following rather curious instruction: "When a person gets up in the morning let him contemplate on the position in which he is lying. Let him be aware that he is lying down." This is certainly an exercise in double-think; but how is it to be done? Another article, oddly enough, gives the answer: "On awakening in the morning he must sit up in a grave posture and repeat a verse...".
Nature Notes. Did you know: 1. that (some) snakes eat spiders? 2. that geckos eat scorpions? 3. that crabs have long thin tongues with which they can lick their eyes?
I rather fancy that Kant's a priori is a temporal expression only by analogy. In the refutation of Hume the a priori principle concerned is what we commonly call "memory" -- we cannot say that A is the cause of B unless we remember A when B is occuring. This, of course, in no way interferes with Hume's contention that when we say that A is the cause of B we are saying no more than that A invariably precedes B in time. Memory is a priori in the sense that it is fundamental, that there is no experience without memory. But I don't think Kant intended to suggest that memory temporally precedes an experience. And even if Kant regarded time as purely subjective, the metaphorical sense of the expression does not seem to be altered -- everyone's experience of time is the same, whatever views he may hold about it, and the metaphor derives from the experience and not the view. Generally speaking, the simple precedes or is a priori to the complex merely in the sense that to understand the complex we must first understand the simple. And a principle so simple that it cannot be understood without begging the question is absolutely a priori. So, at least, I understand the term, which seems useful and harmless. I rather get the impression from Stebbing (quoting J.M. Keynes) that it is regarded as the first duty of a philosopher these scientific days to find an answer to Hume, to show that induction is certain, in other words, and thus to vindicate the scientists' belief that all is for the best in the best of all possible (scientific) worlds. Philosophy, having failed to come up to expectations, has fallen into disrepute.
A friend of Mr. W. brougt a Young Catholic yesterday who wanted to ask questions about the First Cause. I found my reading of Kierkegaard most useful, and I managed to make it clear that what the Christian believes is an absurdity. This has the advantage of being double-edged. The Christian may reply, "Yes, and I believe it because it is an absurdity"; but this so easily becomes, "Oh, so then what I believe is an absurdity. How absurd!" Of course, one must insist that it is only a philosophical absurdity, and that the Christian is bound to believe it: but this, too, is double-edged, since he is only bound to believe the absurdity because he cannot know it, whereas the Christian may well react by saying (or thinking), "I do not admit that I am bound to believe it -- I believe it because I choose to" -- and once he realizes that it is a matter of choice whether he believes or not what is absurd, he is already undermined. I also remembered Strachey's "Cardinal Manning"[1], where it is said that it is a Catholic Article of Faith that a true knowledge of God is possible without Faith. This is a particularly absurd absurdity, and it seemed to register a direct hit. But he had been told that Buddhism was the doctrine of cause and effect, which is a particularly misleading statement -- it is really not much advantage to give up Catholicism in order to embrace Rationalism. I find these distractions unwelcome and exhausting, however adequately the questions seem to have been answered (it is doubly exhausting to discover, a month or two later, that in fact the questions were answered wrongly -- a kind of esprit d'escalier[2]). Fortunately, the remoteness of this place discourages too many visitors. There was another, very enigmatic, person present during the discussion. Dressed in white, with the head completely shaven and wearing an Indian style forage cap (like Nehru), he looked typically Indian with a round face and sleepy eyes. But he behaved exactly like a Sinhalese Buddhist, and also spoke Sinhalese (he told the village children who had come to make less noise). The odd thing was, however, that he was rather noticeably not introduced -- perhaps deliberately -- and said not a word in the entire discussion, though it was evident that he understood what was being said. Most odd.
I have now lived in this kuti for more than two years (since it was built) without missing a single night.
[EL. 162] 19.vi.1959
Thank you for yours of yesterday. Thank you also for sending the extracts from Sartre. Though you actually copied out more than I really intended, it is none the less most welcome -- the whole passage is of capital importance and so admirably lucid, and I have been glad to re-read it. My treatise on mind is not. As usual the ramifications grew and grew until I was intimidated by the vastness of the project, and I have been content merely to imagine it. One thing becomes more and more clear, however, and that is that in the Suttas the same word -- mano, for example, or rúpa -- has different meanings, sometimes within a single sentence; and these meanings correspond to different levels of understanding. This is the secondary reason why a method of interpretation -- which, as a rationalization, depends upon logical argumentation, and thus upon each word's having one meaning and one only -- cannot be applied to the Suttas. The only way to find out what a Teaching in the Suttas means is to refer to one's own experince. (The primary reason why method will not work is, of course, that all method depends upon the paticcasamuppáda -- it is phassapaccayá -- and cannot therefore be applied to the p.s., just as chemistry cannot deal with nuclear physics, upon which it depends.)
Koestler, as far as literature goes, is obviously right; and he demonstrates his own thesis by being himself thoroughly engaged -- the article reeks of engagement. (It is incredibly parochial. Nobody in the West can think of anything worse -- or anything else -- than the Hydrogen Bomb. Why? Because it might destroy their precious civilization.) It provokes the reflexion that if all literature is engaged, then the Suttas are not literature, except superficially. Nibbána, after all, is cessation of engagement, is it not? (I rather suspect he mistakes the Middle Way for the Way of Moderation -- in other words, Sweet Reasonableness, or, as I read the other day, Reasonable Sweetness.) As regards the P.T.S. Anguttara -- I have none of the five volumes here (except no. two in translation, which I can hardly bear to read), and should welcome any or all of them, the more the better. My reading is now more or less confined to the Suttas and I am glad of any addition to my library....
P. S. Koestler assumes that both the Buddha's Teaching and the Existentialist Philosophy are works of art, and that implicit in them are various assumptions about the nature of existence. Koestler is himself an artist, and cannot imagine anything beyond -- indeed, it is probably true to say that the assumption that there is nothing beyond art is precisely the assumption about the nature of existence that is inherent in Koestler's own writing. Koestler is engaged according to his own definition -- but he is engaged because he assumes the idea of engagement itself. And this dates him. He is a man of the XXth Century, obsessed with the idea of objectivity; for artistic objectivity -- the refusal to preach your engagement, and merely to describe it as one amongst an infinity of possible engagements -- is the brother of scientific objectivity -- which is the refusal to admit your point of view, and merely to dismiss it as one amongst an infinity of possible points of view --, and it comes of a fear of being (in Kierkegaard's words) infinitely interested. When you are infinitely interested either you keep quiet (as the Buddha was inclined to do immediately after Enlightenment) or you preach (as the Buddha did after persuasion or invitation by Brahmá Sahampati). Of course the Existentialists are (or were?) enragés and not simply engagés, they never pretended to be anything else. Koestler may not be hostile to the Buddha's Teaching or to Existentialism, but this is because he has understood neither. Had he understood he would either be a Buddhist (or Existentialist) or else positively hostile. As it is he has neutralized both -- or so he hopes -- in the modern artistic no-point-of-view, which is "engagement" as he understands it. Do you agree?
The trouble about discussing mind, I find (I here refer to discussions on this subject fra me e me) is that (a) they always ramify fantastically and (b) one always finds that one has not been talking about mind (either mano or viññána) but only about námarúpa. The Committe called (?) Buddhaghosa Thera make (Fowler allows a pl. vb. with a collective n.) a parallel most grave error in their Vis. Mag. 14th Chapter when they set out to describe the viññánakkhandha second, and next to the rúpakkhandha and before vedaná, saññá and sankhárá -- that is why the last two are so thin there, because it is these two that B. describes under viññána. This is quite contrary to the Suttas, which never change the order for the very reason that it is only after you have exhausted everything positive by the first four that viññána remains (M. 140) (simply, perhaps, because one finds that when everything has been exhausted something seems still to remain and nothing can be found) and that is indescribable except on the basis of that due to which it arises (M. 38) or on the basis of námarúpa (M. 109) which it is not and, unlike the other four, it is the only infiniteness (ánañca -- se the four áruppas) among them and so phenomenologically it is the pure negative (the four áruppas are four Absolute Negations). From this you may safely infer that I quite agree with your earlier "glass-shelves" theory with the reservation that an infinitely extensive (or an infinite series or hierarchy of infinitely extensive) glass shelve(s) is (are) indistinguishable from nothing except dialectically. This latter I regard as important. If the pañcakkhandhá are assumed (upádinná) then the assumption must, by its nature, be a dialectic assumption, but since fundamentally, dialectic (d. = indecision = fear = pain) is unpleasant, one side is compulsively closed by tanhá and avijjá, and the other side left open becomes the object of faith. Here a thought occurs to me: you know my view of the necessary organic relation of faith-ignorance (saddhá-avijjá) in the puthujjana, where faith supplements the deficiency of knowledge truncated by ignorance and makes action (kamma) not only possible but inescapable: well, my point here is this, that, given faith's intimacy with ignorance (take this in the worst sense if you like), it only functions well (as bonne foi) when ignored (what the psychologists would in their mythological jargon perhaps call "in the subconscious", which, translated, means "in behaviour patterns normally overlooked in the other" but subjectivelly it means "in pure unreflective action", I think). But in proportion as faith is brought up by reflexion into full ignorance-governed cognizance (knowledge of the limited kind that always must accompany the broken-up faith-ignorance ménage) it either dies and turns into honest doubt or lives on as mauvaise foi. I say "it dies and becomes doubt" because it is an easily verifiable fact that if one knows one is acting on faith alone one becomes inhibited and the action collapses (e.g. miracles, or Ogden and Richards' centipede). This, I take it, is because action is only an aspect -- or a function -- of faith and ignorance (when analyzed, it appears as paticcasamuppáda and nirodha and then vanish in themselves). The first three paths are necessarily paradoxical, and represent the opening of fundamental dialectics (of which the basic ones are consciousness/non-consciousness and being/non-being). It is these that indicate nirodha, I take it. The sotápanna's aveccapasáda as "confidence due to undergoing" is properly faith which is no more than faith (M. 47 [97?]) and, owing to loss of a measure of ignorance, his knowledge (ñána) is no more knowledge as the simple opposite of ignorance. Confidence and paññá are now both one and two until the arahat's resolution terminates the absurdity (see also M. 95).
[EL. 163] 2.vii.1959
Thank you for your letter. If there is the Anguttara to follow there is no need to send me the other P.T.S. volumes immediately. I am slowly reading the Majjhima at present and this will last for a bit. I should, nevertheless, be grateful for these other volumes as well as the Anguttara if it is no great inconvenience to you to do without them, but all can come at once at your leisure.
I have now entered one of my non-letter-writing moods, and so I shall not reply in detail at present to your rather meaty letter.
[EL. 164] 23.vii.1959
Many thanks for the books, which have arrived safely. Also for your p.c. Boswell is of no interest at all, thank you all the same. Nothing needed at the moment. Weather has been exceptionally cloudy, which no doubt corresponds to your continuous rain since Wesak. Not unpleasant. Mrs. G. has sent me a new drug (Pathilon) which much reduces my stomach acid and improves my digestion, and there is a corresponding and most welcome improvement in my bodily comfort. Having worked up a certain momentum I am anxious to let it take me as far as it will and am avoiding distractions, so I shall continue not to write at length. Visited by occasional elephants (one walked past the kuti at 6:15 p.m. -- I thought it was monkeys until I saw the top of its back just below the kuti), and also at 2 a.m. by a large scaly anteater (at least I suppose it was that).
[EL. 165] 5.x.1959
...I imagine that the irrational outburst of popular anger against the Sangha is symptomatic of a fairly widespread unpopularity of the bhikkhus in Ceylon on account of their unseemly and worldly behaviour (which cannot be denied). But if the laity continue to use the Sangha as a rubbish bin for their unwanted offspring can they expect it not to smell a little? (There is in this village one particular small boy who is extraordinarily badly behaved and quite beyond his parents' control, and I suspect that an attempt is being made to get rid of him by having me ordain him. Needless to say, this will not be successful; but it is typical of the current attitude.) Mr. P. tells me that some local bhikkhus are going without dána, but I have in no way been affected, and I am glad to hear that you have not. But no bhikkhu who still has the use of his legs has any ground for complaint that dána is not brought to his monastery. I suspect that hardly any bhikkhu would be short of food if he took the trouble to go pindapáta for it. As for bhikkhus being shouted at in the street, that is a very salutary experience for them, and I almost say that it should be encouraged. But the whole affair will be forgotten in a week.
My Vas (thank you for asking) has been intestinally disturbed by the local colitis that is common in the dry weather. It answers quickly enough to Entero-Vioform, but since it resembles an aggravation of my usual intestinal state I was slow to recognize it and delayed treatment. And once the guts get disturbed they take long to settle down again, and I am still not quite back to my normal state of ill-health.
...If you have the leisure, I should be glad of a précis translation of M. 47 (Vímamsaka Sutta), which is beyond the range of both the Ven. Buddhadatta's Dictionary and my Pali.
[EL. 166] 21.x.1959
...Your disease, which I have not (yet) encountered, sounds unpleasant, and alarming with its irregular pounding heartbeats. If I get it I shall now know that it is not (necessarily) fatal.
You are probably right in anticipating a lot of foolishness if attempts are made to reform the Sangha. One should, I think, in the first place keep one's head down to avoid being hit by whatever is being thrown about, and in the second refuse to be browbeaten or stampeded into consenting to what is contrary to Dhammavinaya. Ceylon, however, like other Oriental countries (until they become Communist) is enormously inefficient, and the threatened widespread storm may turn out to be no more than a few scattered showers. Anyway, I hope so.
Thank you for your description of the Símá bandhana -- this is a function in which I have never taken part. Mr. P. wanted to make a Símá here, but was discouraged.
The Eddington does not interest me, thank you all the same -- I have already read it, and besides there is a copy at Vajiráráma. I have never read Wittgenstein, so can give no opinion. He is, I think, approved of by Russell, which is rather a doubtful recommendation, though also by A. Huxley (in Those Barren Leaves) so he may be elegant.
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Footnotes:
[161.a] Because the Comy. only allows one "moment" for the Sotápatti Path the effect, in practice, is that every sekha you can meet with and talk to must be at least a Sotápanna. With this I do not agree. [Back to text]
[161.1] From Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians. [Back to text]
[161.2] 'Staircase-mindedness', i.e. never to have a ready answer. [Back to text]